


How Very

by the_sound_of_inevitability



Category: Karate Kid (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Heathers Fusion, Frottage, Internalised homophobia does not exist in this dojo, M/M, Semi-Public Sex, in which Johnny has already left Cobra Kai and is a better guy for it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 11:29:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29883909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_sound_of_inevitability/pseuds/the_sound_of_inevitability
Summary: “Greetings and salutations,” he said, looking Johnny up and down. The greeting came out broad, with just enough stretch in his vowels to make Johnny pause. Not Californian, then. His gaze was casual, non-threatening. He wasn’t trying to psych Johnny out or anything, just looking. Inexplicably, Johnny found himself trying to puff out his chest, to straighten his posture and square his shoulders, and had to damp down the instinct.“LaRusso,” he said, “right?”A VERY loose Heathers AU, in which Daniel LaRusso is the new kid come to give Johnny Lawrence a vacation from being popular. Features the worst Heathers/karate pun I could possibly think of.
Relationships: Daniel LaRusso/Johnny Lawrence
Comments: 13
Kudos: 47





	1. Chapter 1

Lunch was nothing to write home about but then Johnny couldn’t remember it being anything else, in all the years he’d been at West Valley High. He poked the string beans around on his tray, trying to remember why he’d ever turned down a packed lunch to begin with.

“What about the new kid?”

His friend and their girls were poring over another one of their idiotic lunchtime polls; surveys meant to remind the other kids in the school who ran this shit heap they called school, and give themselves a little joke into the bargain.

_If you inherit five million dollars the same day aliens tell the earth they're blowing us up in two days, what would you do?_

Johnny hated the surveys. 

_If you had to choose between a Nissan 300ZX and a Plymouth Horizon, what would it be?_

It was really the girls who’d started it, but to his growing disdain his friends had jumped on them too, using them as a springboard to start fights and beat the shit out of their classmates. Not Johnny’s idea of a good time.

He didn’t think it was fair to start fights when the five of them were black belts. He’d become close friends with the guys during their time at Cobra Kai, the dojo down in Tarzana, but as time went on he realised that for them it was more about power and dominance. For him, it was about balance, and control. The whole thing left a bad taste in his mouth. 

He’d quit Cobra Kai that winter after a falling-out with his sensei, and although he stayed in the popular clique by the skin of his teeth, his friends had definitely cooled on him. So Johnny was not at all surprised when:

“Lawrence, go give the new kid the lunchtime poll.”

“Huh?” He looked up from his string bean feng shui, trying his best to shake his fringe out of his eyes. 

Susan was staring at him from her perch on Dutch’s knee, lazily chewing gum. Without looking down, she tore the top page from her notepad and threw it over the lunch table. He watched it waft to the surface, and read the question at the top of the page.

_Would you rather forget who you are, or who everyone else is?_

He scowled. “What is this shit?”

“Just go,” Dutch sneered. “And try not to fall on his dick.”

Sniggers abound at Dutch’s wit; Johnny rolled his eyes and tried to ignore the heat that rose in his cheeks. After he split up with Ali, rumours had gotten round, but Johnny had been big enough that no one dared say them to his face. Except for his so-called friends. None of their fucking business anyway, what he liked. Three more months and he was done with this piece of shit school.

He stood quickly, pushing his chair back and swiping the paper off the table in one movement. A quick scan of the room showed the new kid sitting by himself at a table near the window, eating an apple, his feet up on the next chair. It looked like he was reading. 

“His name’s LaRusso,” Marcy said. “Daniel LaRusso. He’s in my Soc class.”

There were five minutes left at lunch. Johnny picked up his jacket from where it was draped over the back of his chair, and started to pick his way over to the new kid. Do the stupid poll, then get to class and just sit there til the bell rang. That was the plan. 

The kid had started at West Valley last month; Johnny had seen him once or twice in the hallways but hadn’t gotten near enough to commit anything about him to memory. He’d even stayed out of the way of his friends, somehow - Dutch and Jimmy were always eager to welcome new kids with a swirly - but this kid had proved untouchable so far. 

The closer Johnny got, the more he liked what he saw; the kid was olive-skinned, with jet black hair and a serious little pout on his face as he turned the page of his book. One leg was laid out across the chair next to him and his other leg was bent, foot resting on the edge of the chair and knee pointed at the ceiling. He’d finished the apple; the core lay on his lunch tray. His eyes flickered up as Johnny approached, and that pout turned ever so slightly into a smirk. He looked like twenty pounds of trouble in a five pound bag. Looking at any of the other guys like this would earn him a one way ticket to the emergency room. 

As Johnny approached, the guy made a big show and dance of marking his page in his book, before laying it carefully on the table and locking his hands around his knee, looking up at Johnny with an innocent look that bordered on insouciance. The leather jacket creaked across his shoulders with the movement.

“Greetings and salutations,” he said, looking Johnny up and down. The greeting came out broad, with just enough stretch in his vowels to make Johnny pause. Not Californian, then. His gaze was casual, non-threatening. He wasn’t trying to psych Johnny out or anything, just looking. Inexplicably, Johnny found himself trying to puff out his chest, to straighten his posture and square his shoulders, and had to damp down the instinct.

“LaRusso,” he said, “right?”

A half-smile spread across the kid’s face, showing off his plush lips and displaying an adorable pair of prominent front teeth. He jerked his chin at the jacket in Johnny’s hands. The jacket still bore a striking cobra; he hadn’t had the heart to rip off the patch.

“Let me guess,” LaRusso raised an eyebrow, “One of the Karat-Es?”

Karat-Es. The lamest name for him and his friends. Jimm-y, Bobb-y, Tomm-y and Johnn-y. Or at least, his friends now, and formerly him. Needless to say, Dutch wasn’t a fan of the nickname.

Johnny grinned. “Sorta. Was. I’m Johnny.”

“Daniel. What can I do for you, Johnn-y?”

Johnny sighed - _get it over with_ \- and replied, “Would you rather forget who you are, or who everyone else is?”

LaRusso frowned good-naturedly. “What?”

“It’s our lunchtime poll. Would you rather -”

“Yeah no, I heard it, I heard you the first time. Would I rather forget who I am, or who everyone else is.”

He rocked forward and back gently, hands still wrapped around his upright knee. Looking around the room, he seemed to mull over his response, muttering the question to himself, before flicking his gaze back to Johnny.

In the beams of light coming through the window, LaRusso’s brown eyes were the colour of freshly brewed coffee. 

“I guess it depends,” he said, eyes resuming their travels up and down Johnny’s body. “I mean, I guess it really depends. Because I’m not saying I wanna forget who _I_ am but the possibility of forgetting who _you_ are also seems a bit ridiculous. Would I also have to forget who you are?”

It took a few seconds for the synapses in Johnny’s brain to fire, but once they did and he understood what the kid had said, a heat spread across his jaw, climbing steadily towards his cheeks. He had approximately five seconds to retort and split before his blush became apparent, when - 

“What the fuck does that mean?”

Jimmy and Dutch, on either side of him, glaring down at LaRusso. They were in full threat mode. Two pairs of arms were crossed over two chests, muscles standing out and ready. 

“I guess we got ourselves a little fairy, eh Jimmy ?” 

Johnny didn’t have to look at Dutch to know he was wild-eyed and ready for a fight. He always was. Looking down at LaRusso, he wondered if he could tell the other kid that this wasn’t part of the plan, that he hadn’t realised he was the bait in a trap.

LaRusso, for his part, blinked placidly back up at Johnny, completely ignoring the other two. 

“Well?” he asked, voice low and intent, “Come on, Johnn-y. Give me something.”

Johnny’s heart skipped a beat, but he didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer - the aggression pouring off his friends and the pre-fight adrenaline coursing through his veins had tied his tongue already. But, he admitted to himself, he would have had trouble replying coherently to this little dark-eyed vision.

A little dark-eyed vision who was watching him like a cat watches a mouse.

Beside him, Dutch snarled, and lunged forward.

“I’ll give you something, you fucking fa-”

It happened very fast. One moment, LaRusso was reclined against the wall, practically relaxing. The next, his foot had shot out to catch Dutch square in the chin, kicking up into the other boy’s face with full strength. As his leg extended, LaRusso swept his tray off the table, and pulled his other leg down to stand on the floor. Food scattered to the ground beside him, and he lifted himself up, bringing the tray round in an arc to connect with Jimmy’s head.

Dutch fell to the floor, blood pouring from his mouth, and Jimmy slumped onto the table. Johnny could only blink. 

LaRusso tossed the tray back onto the table, and ran a hand through his hair. Standing, he was a full foot - if not more - shorter than Johnny, and something about the way a shrimp like him had taken down Dutch _and_ Jimmy made Johnny’s blood tingle. LaRusso looked back and forth between the two.

“My uncle Louie told me people on the West Coast were more relaxed about that kinda thing,” he said. “Guess he was wrong.”

He turned to look up at Johnny, deep brown eyes meeting bright blue, and here came that half-smile again. It was a lot to take in.

“Come on, Johnn-y,” he said, “You better walk me to class.”


	2. Chapter 2

“What are you doing this evening?”

Johnny rubbed his eyes, and flirted briefly with the idea of slamming the phone back into its cradle. In some ways, he regretted that Ali and he had ended things on such good terms. You couldn’t just walk away from a two year relationship, never mind a five-year friendship, but right now he was definitely wishing he could.

“Why?”

“Group hang at Joyce’s. Tonight.”

“Ali, I’m really not in the mood, I gotta study -”

“Come  _ on _ , Johnny. An hour, tops. Just show up, I’ll buy you that sundae you like, and you’ll be back to the books before 9.”

“Why do you need me there?”

“Because Susan is throwing a big fit over Dutch walking off on her after school, but you and I  _ both  _ know he’s going to show and then they’ll be too busy playing tonsil hockey and I’ll be left alone and you  _ promised _ -”

“OK, OK,” he cut her off, “What time?”

* * *

It was a tight squeeze in the window booth, what with Johnny, Ali, Susan, Bobby and Tommy sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, and the constant elbow jostling was really getting in the way of Johnny’s sundae enjoyment. 

Dutch hadn’t shown yet, which was a relief. After the lunchtime fracas, neither him nor Jimmy had been seen on school grounds. It could have been from shame, but Johnny had a sneaking suspicion that it was more of a tactical retreat.

The others were talking loudly about some bullshit, and Johnny was dipping in and out of the conversation, counting down the minutes until it was time for him to leave. He scooped up the last of the sundae sauce and licked the spoon clean, running his tongue over the back to catch every drop. Once the meagre store of chocolate was gone, he dropped the spoon back in the empty glass, and stretched his arms along the back of the booth. The others weren’t paying attention to him, and he was starting to think he could just slide out of his seat, head to his car and be gone before they noticed, when their waitress laid another sundae down in front of him. Before she could walk away, he touched her elbow lightly. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t order this.”

“I know, sweetie,” she smiled. “It’s from your friend at the bar.”

Johnny frowned and leaned back, looking around the waitress’s hips toward the bar. At the other side of the room sat Daniel LaRusso.

He was looking straight back, his book in his hands and a cup of coffee sitting on the bar counter in front of him. At Johnny’s look, he twitched an eyebrow upward, and did a one-finger salute before wetting his fingertip delicately with his tongue and using it to turn the page.

Johnny grinned. He was moving before he’d given it a thought, swiping his new sundae up off the table and making his way toward LaRusso. The noise from his friends dimmed a little, but he was past caring. 

As in the lunch hall, LaRusso ostentatiously marked his place in his book before setting it on the bar counter, and looked Johnny up and down as he approached.

“Thanks for the sundae,” he said.

LaRusso shrugged, smiling. “Seemed like you were really enjoying that first one,” he said, picking up his coffee cup, “Though I gotta admit, my intentions weren’t entirely innocent.”

“Oh?”  _ Be cool, Lawrence. _

__

__

“I mean, we didn’t get a chance to catch up after class today,” he took a sip of coffee, “and you looked like you were sorta struggling over there with your fellow WASPs.”

__

__

Johnny threw a glance back at the table, to confirm the others weren’t even looking in their direction. He pulled a seat out and sat down beside LaRusso. He didn’t answer the guy straight away, instead picking up his spoon and taking a first bite of sundae number two. He hummed in satisfaction, and sucked the spoon clean before continuing.

__

__

When he finally looked back at LaRusso, his eyes were fixed on Johnny’s mouth, jaw gone a little bit slack. He didn’t try to hide the look of appreciation on his face, and Johnny smirked.

__

__

_ Got you _ .

__

__

“So,” Johnny said, taking another spoonful, “Do you come here often?”

__

__

LaRusso laughed softly, eyes fixed on Johnny as he guided the spoon into his mouth. 

__

__

“I’m thinking I will now,” he said.

__

__

The diner door opened, and the noise from Johnny’s table kicked up a notch. He looked over. 

__

__

It was Dutch and Jimmy.

__

__

Without thinking, he dropped the spoon into the half-full sundae glass, and grabbed LaRusso by the arm. 

__

__

“Come on,” he said, standing up. “Let’s get out of here.”

__

__

LaRusso - in not nearly enough of a hurry - drained the last of his coffee before scooping up his book.

__

__

“I like a man who moves fast,” he grinned, before following Johnny out the back door.

__


	3. Chapter 3

“So, where can I drop you off?” Johnny asked once they were moving. The sun had gone down, and the night air was cool on their faces. 

“Drop me off?” LaRusso replied. “I thought you were whisking me off on an adventure.”

“I was whisking you out so you didn’t get your ass kicked by the other Karat-Es,” he said, putting a ridiculous emphasis on the stupid nickname. “Don’t thank me or anything.”

LaRusso  _ pfft _ ’d at that, holding his hand out to caress the wind. “Because that worked out so well for them earlier.”

“That was two to one, and you took them by surprise. It would have been at least three to one in there, and that’s if Bobby didn’t get involved.”

“Three to one, huh? Not three to two?”

Johnny gave him a sideways glance. The guy was smiling, at least, which helped coax a smile out of him too. He shrugged.

“I don’t fight anymore,” he said, and left it at that. It was way too early in the - whatever this was - to get into his Cobra Kai shit.

Luckily, LaRusso seemed happy to drop it.

“So,” he said. “How about that adventure?”

* * *

Johnny ended up crossing the 101 into Encino, before driving the two of them up Mulholland to San Vicente. LaRusso had been in LA for a month, and admitted that he wasn’t all that impressed with what he saw so far, which Johnny immediately took umbrage with. Hence their visit up to San Vicente, because Johnny was adamant that you couldn't really appreciate LA without having seen it from a view.

“How can you not be impressed?” he asked, as the car wound its way up mountain roads. “LA has everything.”

LaRusso made that  _ pfft! _ noise again, and shrugged. “Man, when you move around like me and my ma do, you realise that everywhere thinks they have everything, but all they have is a big pile of nothing.”

“Come on then, hotshot,” Johnny laughed. “Like where?”

LaRusso held out his hand, and began to count off on his fingers: “Like Philadelphia, like Columbus, like Chicago, Minneapolis, Dallas, Albuquerque,” he shuddered, “the less said about Salt Lake City the better, and now Los Angeles. Eight schools in eight states and the only thing different is my locker combination. Lemme tell you, the sheen wears off." 

“And what about New Jersey?”

“Hey, say it with a bit a respect,” LaRusso replied, exaggerating his accent to a ridiculous degree and pinching his hand together, “New Jersey really does have everythin’.”

Now it was time for Johnny to make the  _ pfft! _ noise. 

“Just wait til you get a load of this view,” he said. “This is the best viewpoint in the city. Immediate conversion to the LA way, right here.”

“I don’t know,” came the reply, like a caress, “I’m enjoying the view right here.”

_ Just focus on the road, Lawrence. _

  
  


* * *

  
  


It made LaRusso speechless for all of three seconds, so Johnny considered it a win. Los Angeles was spread below them like a circuit board, millions of lights twinkling up at them, as if the entire city was just a mirror reflecting starlight.

The two of them had left the car and moved to the edge of the viewpoint. Standing side by side, Johnny was struck again by the height difference between the two of them. There was something in the way LaRusso spoke, in the way he carried himself, that made him seem a lot taller than he actually was. 

“‘Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths’, huh?” he said, glancing up at Johnny, a lopsided smile creeping across his face.

“What?”

“It’s a poem,” he said. “You should look it up.”

“Oh,” He had nothing to say to that, and settled instead for kicking some loose gravel under his feet. 

“It’s not bad, Johnn-y,” LaRusso said. “What’s next?”

Johnny remembered his plan to study, the books he’d left on his desk at home, and found that he didn’t want to go. He looked into LaRusso’s eyes, black in the low light, and thought about how people on the West Coast were meant to be more relaxed about that kind of thing. 

“What did you have in mind?”


	4. Chapter 4

“The beach is nice,” LaRusso admitted begrudgingly, “Been a while since we lived near a beach.”

They were sitting above the high tide line, with a bag of chips and a steadily dwindling six-pack of beer between them. Johnny had been skeptical when they pulled up beside a liquor store, but whatever weird magnetism LaRusso had had clearly worked on the clerk, because he walked out with bottles of beer and a shiteating grin.

“So what’s the best place you’ve been?” Johnny asked, lying back in the sand. The light pollution from LA hid a lot of the constellations, but a star or two blinked down at the two of them. He’d lived in California his whole life; apart from the odd vacation with Sid and his mom, he hadn’t seen much else.

“Best place?” LaRusso sighed. He was sitting upright, arms linked loosely around his legs. 

“Yeah,” he raised himself on one elbow, and took a moment to enjoy the way the moonlight shone on LaRusso’s hair. 

“The best place is Newark, New Jersey,” he said, saying the words out across the dark water, addressing the invisible horizon with a quiet resignation. “But I gotta say, Johnny Lawrence, this is a close second.”

Johnny had already decided that he liked how LaRusso said his name. Like it was a secret between the two of them, a secret that contained more ‘aw’s than it actually did. 

He turned to face Johnny, and Johnny was struck again by his dark eyes, by the small pout of his lips. From ages 12 to 17, Johnny would have said that Ali Mills was the most beautiful person he knew.

Now, on this beach, it was probably Daniel LaRusso.

LaRusso turned, and dropped down to one elbow, bringing his face close to Johnny’s. He smelled of beer, and coffee, and something else that was just him, and for some reason Johnny found it hard to take a breath. 

“Tread softly, Johnny,” he breathed.

He didn’t know what LaRusso meant, but there was still a little Cobra Kai left in Johnny.  _ Strike first, _ Kreese had always said, and that’s what he did.

He leaned forward to close the gap between them, and pressed his lips to LaRusso’s. 

The guy didn’t exactly come across as hesitant - the way he carried himself alone belied it, with his sharp tongue and his casual self-confidence - but he opened under Johnny’s mouth like a flower. Without breaking contact, he scrambled closer, and slung a leg over to straddle him, knees grinding into the sand on either side of Johnny’s thighs. LaRusso twined his hands behind his neck, fingers trailing through his hair, and Johnny dropped his hands to his hips. The proximity and the heat of LaRusso’s body made his heart skip a beat, and he broke off. 

LaRusso laid his forehead against Johnny’s, and their breath mingled in the space between them. He laid a kiss against the corner of his mouth, before dipping back for a proper kiss. It was different to kissing Ali but Johnny got the impression that no one kissed the way LaRusso kissed. He licked into Johnny’s mouth like it was his favourite meal, like he was one of Joyce’s sundaes, breaking off only to nibble and suck at his bottom lip in a way that made his head spin. All the while, he rocked gently in Johnny’s grip, pressing down against the growing bulge in his jeans. For his part, Johnny was flexing upwards, trying to match LaRusso movement for movement, increasing the friction to levels of pleasure that bordered on discomfort. 

In a haze of lust, it occurred to Johnny that frotting against a guy he barely knew was slightly out of character for him. Previously, the closest he’d gotten to public sex was touching Ali’s boob over her cardigan at the movies, and now he was approaching orgasm with a practical stranger, on a moonlit beach as the tide rolled in.

LaRusso surged down, and twisted his hips so that the bulge in  _ his _ jeans matched up perfectly with Johnny’s, and -  _ oh _ \- Johnny found that, right now, he didn’t give much of a shit where he was. Just as long as LaRusso did that aga- 

Another downward press and tantalising drag upward, and Johnny wrapped an arm around LaRusso’s lower back, locking them together, feeling him  _ everywhere _ . The pressure in his crotch grew to an almost unbearable level. His abdomen went hard, just as LaRusso made a fist in his hair and pulled it tight, sending him over the edge with a sharp push. His mouth went slack, and he moaned against LaRusso’s lips, barely able to kiss back as the guy rode him through his orgasm. After a few seconds - an eternity - of pleasure, LaRusso went still, and let out a shuddering moan. He pulled back from the kiss. With his last brain cell, Johnny pulled him back down against him, not a hair’s breadth between them, and pressed down against the stiffness in LaRusso’s jeans, massaging his cock none-too-gently through the denim. That hand tightened in his hair again, sending another spark through him, and he watched LaRusso fall apart. 

* * *

The two of them lay on the sand side by side, fingers intertwined. After a while - Johnny couldn’t guess how short, or how long - LaRusso sat up, shifting awkwardly.

“Well,” he said. “That was really great. Not a massive fan of the aftermath, I gotta say - do your pants feel gross too? - but that was wild. LA is definitely looking up for me. Maybe I gotta let my ma go, next time she wants to leave. 'So long, ma, I've found the love of my life'.”

Johnny felt that telltale blush start to inch its way up his neck, and thanked the darkness for what it hid.

“Come on, LaRusso,” he said. “Let’s go get a slushie.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK, OK - it ended up being much less of a Heathers AU than I intended, but I'm pretty OK with that. Turns out those crazy kids just wanted to make out on a beach and then have me leave 'em alone, who knew.
> 
> The poem Daniel refers to is 'He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven', by W.B. Yeats. Give it a read, if you haven't already - it's lovely!


End file.
